Members of Trenton’s Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) had an extra reason to be jubilant as they set up for Saturday’s Winter Jubilee.

Leading up to the event at the Batawa Community Centre — held in partnership with the annual Pond Hockey Classic for the first time — it was announced federal funding in the amount of $6 million per year will be shared among 32 MFRCs across Canada with a goal to modernize and enhance services offered for military families.

The local MFRC’s share is approximately $375,000.

“And that is sustainable, ongoing funding,” said Trenton MFRC executive director Tamara Kleinschmidt. “So that means that each year we will be continuing to get that amount.”

Kleinschmidt said they plan on applying the funds in several different areas, the first of which is the expansion of Child and Youth Mental Health services and supports with a focus on resiliency. This will include the hiring of a youth counsellor.

The MFRC is currently working with researchers at the University of Calgary, taking their research on resilient military youth and turning it into local programming.

“So we’re going to do a direct line between the research to the programming, so we’re pretty excited about that,” she said.

Money will also go to develop a “robust” casual child care program.

“Which is something that is really important to the Air Force,” said Kleinschmidt. “We have a really hard time of meeting the demands of the Air Force in regards to casual or last-minute child care when schedules change.”

Funding will also go to support the MFRC’s satellite site in Belleville, which opened last year and which also provides child care services.

“We weren’t counting on that but it certainly is beneficial for us to know that we’ve got some sustainable funding moving forward.”

The final initiative receiving a federal boost will be the expansion of the Special Needs Inclusion Program (SNIP) to all MFRCs in Ontario.

The Trenton MFRC established the first SNIP three years ago in an effort to help military families with special needs members more easily integrate into a new community.

“One of the struggles they have is if they have special needs member of their family, moving from place to place, all of the supports and services — particularly because it’s provincial jurisdiction — change from area to area, even within the same province,” said Kleinschmidt.

“What happens is, it’s this big ramp up to services and to get those supports in. So the special needs kids, and even the adults, they tend to lose a lot of momentum every time they move, or it takes a year to work up a waitlist or that kind of thing.”

She said with the new funding they will be able to take the program and support developed locally and help all Ontario MFRCs roll out the same program in their own communities.

Kleinschmidt said she was “absolutely thrilled” with all they can do with the new funding, but the ability to hire a youth counsellor especially stands out. The Trenton MFRC had been struggling for close to two years to piece together funding to hire one.

“Because we knew the communities resources are overburdened,” she explained. “We know that youth mental health is an issue in our community, in the whole region. It just becomes exponential when it’s military youth.”

While the funding is appreciated, Kleinschmidt said that the importance of military families being included for the first time in the most recent defence policy shouldn’t be overlooked.

“We thought the big win, even before the money, was families being included in defence policy.”